Safety Analysis and Seismic Behavior of Concrete Arch Dams

Investigation of seismic behavior and seismic safety evaluation of concrete dams has been the focus of many researchers due to the importance of dam safety during an earthquake. Because the destruction of these structures due to an earthquake can have negative economic and social effects. In the present study, the nonlinear dynamic analysis of gravity concrete dams has been done considering the effect of dam-reservoir interaction. In fact, the minimum and maximum principal stresses for the U-shaped dam and reservoir have been measured via ANSYS. Also, the present study seeks to investigate the evaluation of V-shaped dams in seismic conditions. The results show that the static analysis with non-linear behavior in the rock mass with medium and weak layers has more stability compared to the weak homogeneous system. But it is more possible to concentrate plastic strains in weak layers. Other results of this study showed that the compressive stresses in the safety check of the dam were not critical and the maximum tensile arc stresses were obtained mainly in the upper levels of the middle blocks and also in the vicinity of the contact surface with the side supports.